Foster uses her strong research skills and her skill at turning historical names into living, breathing humans to great...
In the second book of her series, Foster continues her examination of the famous slave uprising led by Nat Turner.
In 1831, a slave of Ethiopian lineage inspired a rag-tag band to embark on an attempt to shake off the rules of their cruel masters and fight oppression. When they were finished, 50 whites had died and Turner entered the history books. Foster obviously feels a close bond with Turner and his followers. The novel traces his journey side-by-side with that of famed abolitionist and author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Foster touches on Turner’s roots, invoking his Ethiopian mother and grandmother, and writes of both the early and late days of his enslavement. The heartbreaking descriptions of slave life are vivid: stumbling on frozen feet, starving slaves gathered in cold, unheated shacks to comfort one another and pool what little food they had. Foster examines the lies surrounding Turner’s capture, trial, imprisonment and hanging; the stories of his accusers; and the moral and emotional journey taken by Stowe. She brings historical characters to life with a deft and sure hand. Her technique of switching points of view and zooming back and forth in time won’t appeal to those who prefer a more linear approach to storytelling, but even they will appreciate Foster’s attention to detail and her ability to evoke raw, authentic emotion.
Foster uses her strong research skills and her skill at turning historical names into living, breathing humans to great advantage.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4165-7812-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Howard Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2012
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
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